Pierre François Tissot

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Tissot

Pierre François Tissot (20 March 1768 – 7 April 1854) was a French man of letters and politician.

Biography

Early years

Tissot was born in

Versailles to a native of Savoy, who was a perfumer appointed by royal warrant to the court. At the age of eighteen he entered the service of a solicitor of the Châtelet, in order to learn the practice of the law, but he was more attracted to literature, and, as a handsome youth, was occasionally invited to the fêtes of the Petit Trianon. [1]

Revolution

Tissot devoted himself to the cause of the

Moselle and Rhine, Tissot went with him as his secretary. He then returned to Paris and resumed his more modest position of Secrétaire Général des Subsistences.[1]

On the insurrection of Prairial 1 1795 (carried out against the

Napoleon Bonaparte, having been persuaded to read his translation of the Eclogues of Virgil, struck his name off the list.[1]

Empire

Although still a partisan of the

Faubourg Saint Antoine; finally in fairly comfortable circumstances, he devoted himself to literature. Jacques Delille took him as his assistant at the Collège de France, and Tissot succeeded him as head of it (1813); Napoleon signed the appointment as a reward for a poem composed by Tissot on his victory in the Battle of Lützen.[1]

Restoration and July Monarchy

He was removed from this post, however, in 1821, following the publication of a Précis sur les guerres de la Révolution, which, in the context of the

First Coalition during the French Revolutionary Wars.[1]

Deprived of his post, Tissot was left still more free to attack the government in the press. He was one of the founders of the newspaper Le Constitutionnel, and of the review, the Minerve. Without laying stress on his literary works (Traité de la poésie latine, 1821; translation of the Bucolics, 3rd ed., 1823; Études sur Virgile, 1825) we should mention the Mémoires historiques et militaires sur Carnot (on

General Foy (1827).[1]

On the overthrow of

Académie française on the death of Bon-Joseph Dacier (1833). It was then that he published his chief works: Histoire de Napoléon (2 vols., 1833), and Histoire complète de la révolution française de 1789 à 1806 (6 vols., 1833–1836), comprising several inconsistencies and omissions, but containing a number of the author's reminiscences (in some places they become practically memoirs, and are consequently of real value).[1]

In 1840 a carriage accident almost cost him his sight; he had to find an assistant, and passed the last years of his life in circumstances of increasing suffering, amid which, however, he preserved his optimism. He died in Paris.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Chisholm 1911.
Attribution
  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Tissot, Pierre François". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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